Burt Reynolds – the forgotten superstar

January 17, 2016 admin 4

    Burt Reynolds at the top of his game After marriage to Judy Carne of Laugh-In fame, Burt Reynolds enjoyed relationships with the much older Dinah Shore, and then with actress Inger Stevens until shortly before her suicide in 1970. Out of respect for Miss Stevens he has always […]

Jayne Mansfield – a self-made star.

January 15, 2016 admin 4

  Jayne & Jane at the Underwater premiere 1955 In 1955, in Florida, the premiere for a very ordinary movie called Underwater was actually held underwater. Critics and other guests were encouraged to don aqua-lungs and bathing costumes to watch this Jane Russell vehicle at the bottom of a pool! It was a […]

The Casting Couch.

January 13, 2016 admin 3

  Claudette Colbert was a big star, but even she admitted to getting her start in Hollywood via someone’s ‘casting couch’. In fact, she told an interviewer that the only star she knew of who made it without resorting to the ‘couch’ was Bette Davis. She did not elaborate on that […]

A bit of TV nostalgia.

January 11, 2016 admin 4

  As a follow-up to the Nielsen Ratings of the very top TV shows year by year in the USA, I thought I might take a crack at listing MY favourite programs down the decades. Not one of them reached the top, by the way. I have also highlighted the […]

America’s most watched TV shows 1950-2015

January 9, 2016 admin 0

  I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the top ranked TV show from each season in America since the Nielsen Ratings first appeared in 1950. As the home of TV, the USA has set the pace for the rest of the world with its programs, […]

Studio cover-ups in the early days of Hollywood.

January 7, 2016 admin 2

  A British actor in the fifties named Steve Hayes probably summed up the studio bosses as well as anyone, not that he said so when he was under contract, of course. To do so would have been career suicide, as well he knew. ‘All these guys were ruthless bastards’, […]

Norma Shearer – MGM’S ‘Queen of the Lot’.

January 5, 2016 admin 0

  Irving Thalberg, the ‘boy genius’ in charge of production at MGM, died in 1936 while his wife, Norma Shearer, was in the middle of making Marie Antoinette. He was a genius when it came to organizing a film studio and making it run efficiently and profitably. The fledgling company […]

Is Mel Gibson genuinely ill or just a jerk?

January 3, 2016 admin 3

  Mel Gibson was born in New York in 1956, but lived most of his youth in Australia. He claims that he started drinking at 13. In 1984 in Ontario he was banned from driving for three months after rear-ending a car while intoxicated. By the time he made Lethal […]

Josephine Baker – ‘the Black Venus’.

January 1, 2016 admin 5

  It is more than likely that most young people have never even heard of Josephine Baker. Come to think of it, there are probably just as many elderly people to whom the name means nothing either. After all, she was a citizen of France, rarely set foot in the […]